


Crimson

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-23
Updated: 2006-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:41:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Crimson

It’s not something to talk about, and Maggie makes that point with her fists when she has to—when Hot Dog asks one of his smirky little fake-innocent questions, or Kat rolls her tongue obscenely across her teeth after giving the assignments. CAG or not, Maggie will break her godsdamned nose if she keeps that up. None of her frakking business.

Karl looks right through it, the way he can look right through just about anything; she doesn’t know where he comes by those endless stores of inner peace he seems to have, but she’s grateful for them, when they’re not driving her up the wall. It’s like he’s got a deep, deep well of water inside him, pure and cold like a mountain lake, and she can throw all the heat and anger and pain she has into it and he takes it. Takes it and has room left for more.

She does her pre-flight check all by herself; has to, these days, there’s not enough deck crew left to do it and frankly she doesn’t trust most of the ones who stayed. She misses the Chief’s steadying presence on the deck—you knew, sure as if the Gods themselves made it so, that when you got in a bird that Tyrol had looked over, it was 100% ready to fly. She misses a lot of things. She misses having a reason to keep going, beyond being too frakking stubborn to stop.

“Ready to go?” Karl says, folding himself into the ECO seat. She shakes her head and flips to the next page of the checklist. “Mags, I got that already, came down and did the checks this morning.”

“Thought you were in the CIC this morning.” They don’t have enough people anymore for anybody to have just one job. Karl’s riding jumpseat in Raptors half the time and covering the CIC the other; Maggie herself has learned more than she ever wanted to know about running the water- and waste-recycling units. The things you had to do to get by.

“The Admiral was meeting with Sharon,” he says, and she glances back at him. His voice is neutral as always, gives nothing away. Deep cold water. “CIC was dead. Kelly covered for me and I came down here to prep for our run.”

“Thanks,” she says, because she’s not touching that other stuff; it’s another thing they don’t talk about, never have, and if she ever _does_ say one word about it it’ll break every fragile little thing they almost have. “Let’s go, then.”

The launch sequence is an old familiar friend, the controls reassuring under her hands, and in no time they’re out in space, and in no time after that they’re cutting through the atmosphere. She knows the filters in the screen are breaking up the brilliant haze to protect her eyes, but she imagines staring into the light and color like an oracle looking into holy flames, and she wonders what she’d find if she read the future there.

Nothing good, most likely. Frak the future. Worry about now.

She and Karl are both good at their jobs, and they’ve gotten good at working together, a silent companiable dance that puts the Raptor on the ground at the landing field with barely a bump. He stands up and stretches as soon as the board is green, and she hides a smile. He’s too frakking tall for this job. Over the reg height for Vipers at all, but too tall for Raptors to be much fun either.

“Let me guess,” he says, grinning at her as she shuts the bird down. “The joke’s on me?”

“Always, Helo,” she says, brushing her hair back off her face. “Let’s go see if the dirt-kissers have the supplies ready to go.”

They don’t, of course. The percentage of ex-Fleeters is a lot lower down here than it is in her head; she’s listing off the people she knew, and the rest of the population is an amorphous civvie blur, but the fact of the matter is that that blur is the majority and they can’t get any-frakking-thing done on time.

“Cool it, Mags,” Karl says quietly, resting his hand on her shoulder as she starts to lose her temper, drawing it into him and pulling it under that still water. “Got all the time in the world. Give ‘em an hour.”

She wants to snap back at him just on principle, take her anger back and throw it in his face, but his hand is steady and solid on her shoulder and what the frak is waiting for her back on Galactica anyway?

That thought’s the one to be afraid of, and she shoves it down hard as she can, swallowing her words and hiding behind a shrug and a nod. “Sure. Fine. Okay.”

“We can walk around the market.” Karl’s voice is coaxing and so calm and his hand is still there, steady as the sun. “Be back in an hour?”

The guy who doesn’t have their supplies yet—and he _was_ Fleet, before; Pegasus, because she doesn’t know his name, but she recognizes the stance and the eyes—nods and gives an apologetic smile. Maggie turns on her heel and walks away, Karl trailing behind her as he does, frakking patient and sweet and willing to wait her out till the end of the world.

She’s got to quit thinking that phrase.

“So what are we shopping for?” she asks, checking her stride so he comes up beside her. Not that he isn’t taking one step for every three of hers anyway, but he’s polite like that and will let her storm on ahead as long as she thinks that’s what she wants. “The stylish scarves and hats that seem to be the thing down here?”

“There’s actual weather down here,” he says, tilting his head back to squint at the sky, letting the sun hit his face. “They need those.”

“We don’t live here,” she points out, and thank the Gods, she’s not broken yet, she can still say that with pride.

“Nope.” He nods at one of the little stalls, where scraps of bright colors are fluttering in the wind that never frakking stops down here. “But we can look around.”

They wander over and she stares at the different bits of fabric arranged with such painful care. Bits and pieces of lives, cobbled together and swapped back and forth in the hope of buying a moment’s pleasure. Less than that. A heartbeat.

She looks back at Karl, who’s stopped outside the shade of the awning and is soaking up the sun again, and she knows the feeling.

“This one would look pretty on you, Lieutenant,” the man running the stall says, and she glances at him, surprised to hear her correct rank. He shrugs and offers the same embarrassed smile as the kid with the supplies. “Knuckledragger on the Pegasus.”

“Raptors on Galactica,” she says, even though she’s in uniform and he can see that plain as day. “And I’m not really shopping,” she says, looking at the strip of crimson cloth in his hand, “just killing time.”

“Ah.” He nods and settles the scarf back in its place on the rack. “Well, if you change your mind.”

“Right.” She walks away, out where she can get a bit of air, and stares back toward the landing yard where her bird is waiting, cool metal solid airtight and smelling like recycled vacuum-dead air, not dust and life. Frak. She wants to go home.

“There’s food up that way,” Karl says, stepping up beside her and putting his hand on her shoulder again. She wants to shrug it off, but his thumb brushes across the soft skin above her collar and she doesn’t. Feels good to be touched, just for an instant. A heartbeat. “Or we could look for some of the old gang. Starbuck or the Chief or…”

“Can we just go back and wait at the Raptor?” she asks, hating the waver in her voice, hating this place, hating him and his frakking serenity. Only not.

Disappointment curves his mouth the barest fraction, and she hates seeing that even more. Then it’s gone, and he nods, squeezing her shoulder gently. “Sure. Back to the Raptor.”

They sit on the ramp and kick rocks across the landing strip until the civvies show up with their supplies. Maggie rides herd on them, frakking idiots, running the checklist twice to make sure they’re not getting cheated—save the ungrateful bastards from the Cylons for how long, and inside a year they’re shorting you on rations—while Karl helps get the crates settled inside. It takes longer than it should, a mix-up that has to be argued about and cussed over and straightened out by hand, and finally she drags herself into the pilot seat, closes her eyes and lets her shoulders slump and asks the gods for patience.

Then she opens her eyes again, sits up straight, and looks down at her controls to start pre-flight. And she stops.

A strip of crimson fabric is wrapped around the joystick, tied in a lopsided shoelace-style bow. She stares at it for a long moment, then glances back over her shoulder at the ECO seat, where Karl is quietly running his own checks, eyes on his screen, face composed, the picture of innocence and peace.

Something about still waters and depth, the poets say. She doesn’t go for poetry. She just thinks that’s Karl.

She tugs the bow free and slips the scarf around her neck, tucking it down tight and hidden between her suit and her neck. It’s soft and smells like some kind of dried plants and that ubiquitous planet dust. The smell tickles her nose in the sterile air of the Raptor. Smells like something alive.

She turns her attention back to the pre-flight again, runs half of it, then pauses and closes her eyes, letting herself smile just for a moment. Less than that. A heartbeat.

“All set if you are,” Karl says, and she lets herself have another heartbeat to feel his voice wash over her like deep cool water. “Take us home.”  



End file.
